MyGolfSpy Labs: 2018 Driver CG Report

You may not realize it yet, but you do. CG location has a significant influence on how your driver performs. While the average golfer may not know what center of gravity is, or why it matters (in fact, he may not think he cares), there’s a reason why it (CG) is a part of the discussion that accompanies nearly every driver release. High launch, low spin, and super-forgiving, better performance is made possible by the mass properties of the club and the resulting CG locations.

Low and back CG is a mainstay of driver marketing. Low and forward had a run for a bit too. Cobra went Zero CG, Callaway went Sub Zero, and everybody is always moving things around trying to do better, or at least different, than the last time around.

But what does any of that mean, and of equal importance, who is telling the truth about CG location?

That’s what this annual post is all about.

Today we’re going to show you exactly what’s real when it comes to the actual center of gravity placement of this season’s hottest drivers. By the time we’re done, hopefully, you’ll understand why CG matters too.

For those of you who are stumbling across our CG charts for the first time, and may be wondering what they are, and why they matter, we’re not going to rehash all of that here. I would encourage you to check out any and all of our previous posts on the topic.

THE FINE PRINT

Before we get to our charts, it’s important to understand that although heads were measured according to USGA standards, tolerances (both in measurement and in manufacturing) come into play. The tolerance for our measurements is approximately .7mm. To account for this, we represent CG using large dots rather than a smaller absolute point.

We should also note that of the companies that publicly state driver CG locations, most do so based on measurements from CAD drawings. Between manufacturing, assembling, welding, and polishing, CAD projections don’t always align with the finished product. Our data comes from actual retail parts.

Where the dots in our charts are touching or are in close proximity to one another, it’s reasonable to assume the heads have similar performance characteristics.

Finally, although we’ve blown these charts up to make them a bit easier to read, every last one of the CG locations represented is within that tiny little 14mm x 12mm box previously described inour CG Primer.

Interacting with the Charts

For each of the charts displayed below, we’ve defaulted to mostly new (2018) drivers. We’ve listed the PING G400 Series and the PXG 0811x as 2018 because they were released after our 2017 report was published. Note that the observations made below are specific to our 2018 models.

The provided filters allow you to add or remove clubs based on any combination of Year, Manufacturer, and Model. We recommend that, for additional context, you view the charts with previous year’s models selected.Additionally, you can:

Click on any model name at the top of the chart and then click the highlight icon on the extreme top right to isolate that club or clubs

Hold down Ctrl while clicking to isolate multiple clubs

Hover over any dot to reveal additional information, including the relevant weight setting and the actual measurements

With all of that out of the way, let’s get to out 2018 data:

CG YZ (CG RELATIVE TO FACE CENTER)

The chart below shows the YZ (top to bottom/front to back) CG location relative to the center of the face for the drivers measured. Effectively, the area shown represents that 14mm x 12mm box within the clubhead. These measurements depict CG locations without consideration for their relationship to the neutral axis. As such they are not loft dependent. Basically, the chart shows the actual CG location for each driver measured.

Observations

With the M3 and M3 400, TaylorMade offers the widest range of CG movement.

The PING G400 offers the most rearward CG, while the Wilson C300 is the most forward.

CG Relative to the NEUTRAL AXIS & MOI

As illustrated by the image above, the neutral axis is an imaginary line running perpendicular to the center of a lofted driver face. Before you ask, let me tell you why that matters. As the center of gravity moves closer to the neutral axis, you get less gearing (twisting), and a more efficient transfer of energy between the club and ball. As with everything else in our CG discussion, the distance from the center of gravity to the neutral axis (or CG NA as it’s called for short) is measured in millimeters and those millimeters matter.

Many golf companies advertise some variation of fast and forgiving, and while you might not realize it, that has everything to do with the center of gravity relative to the neutral axis. If we assume reasonably centered contact, to be fast – to reduce gearing at impact, and to maximize the efficiency of the strike – the center of gravity needs to be near the neutral axis. To be forgiving, MOI (also shown below) needs to be high. Despite what various marketing claims may lead you to believe, truly fast and truly forgiving is perhaps the most difficult combination to achieve.

Note: because both the data and the scale is fundamentally different, this chart cannot be directly compared to the Front to Back CG YZ chart above.

CGNA & MOI Chart

Observations

In 2016 and 2017, several manufacturers had driven CGs below the neutral axis. This year, only the Callaway Rogue Sub Zero (weight forward) offered a below neutral CG location.

The PXG 0811X is the next lowest (relative to the neutral axis)

Both the TaylorMade M3 and M3 440 (with weight forward) can be considered low/forward designs

With respect to MOI, the PING G400 MAX is in a class by itself (we had to expand the chart). While not measured, PXG’s 0811XF is reportedly nearly as forgiving. The Callaway Rogue, TaylorMade M4, and PING G400, while forgiving by any reasonable standard, don’t come close to matching G400 MAX.

The highest CG (relative to the neutral axis) of 2018 belongs to the TaylorMade M4 D-Type. Drivers in this space generally work well for only a small segment of golfers.

Note the lower MOI of the PING G400 SFT compared to the rest of the G400 lineup. Drivers like the SFT, Rogue Draw, and M4 D-Type offer shot shape correction (often draw bias), that correction invariably has an MOI cost.

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CG XY (Heel/Toe CG)

While the data provided in this chart is certainly interesting, it also comes with a disclaimer of sorts. CG XY is not a straightforward measurement. For example, we mind find drivers with similar XY CG locations, yet very different face heights, face shapes, crown curvatures, bulge and roll radii, etc.. XY CG similarities aside, those other design factors will likely cause the clubs to play quite differently from one another. So while this chart will give you some indication of CG movement along the club’s x-axis as well as any inherent draw or fade bias, the CG NA and MOI chart should prove to be a much better performance comparison.

Note, the toe side is depicted on the left. CG locations left of center suggest varying degrees of fade bias, while locations depicted right of center suggest a draw bias.

Observations

In general, there are more fade-biased options in 2018 than past seasons.

Golfers seeking options to move between true draw and fade options should look at the TaylorMade M3/M3 440, PXG 0811X, and the Mizuno GT180.

SO WHICH CG LOCATION IS BEST?

There is no single center of gravity location that is ideal for everyone. There is no right CG or wrong CG, although I’d certainly argue that some are more niche than others, and a few are quantitatively bad for most golfers. Different manufacturers have different philosophies and different design and manufacturing capabilities. That’s a good thing because more options mean a better chance at finding the right fit.

With that said, we believe that the widest part of the bell curve will achieve the best results with relatively high MOI and low-mid CG drivers. Slower swing speed players, who need help keeping the ball in the air, generally do well with high/back designs. Golfers who are in desperate need of spin reduction (often aggressive swingers who hit down on the ball), will likely get better results with low and forward CG drivers, even at the expense of forgiveness. High MOI isn’t for everyone. For golfers who consistently hit the ball high on the face, a higher CG driver may produce better results, while golfers who habitually strike the ball low on the face will likely benefit from lower CG clubs.

As we’ve said countless times, in golf there are no absolutes, but we believe that by identifying a general center of gravity location that works well for you, you’ll be able to quickly narrow your focus to the few clubs that offer the highest probability of producing good results.

YOUR HOMEWORK

As we have in the past, we encourage you to conduct an experiment on your own. Try splitting our chart 4 ways. If you’re feeling motivated, split it 6 ways. Go out and compare clubs from the different areas you define and see if you find that clubs perform more similarly within boundaries, and quite a bit differently across them. See if the drivers in one section work better for you than those in a different area.

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Tony Covey

Tony is the Editor of MyGolfSpy where his job is to bring fresh and innovative content to the site.
In addition to his editorial responsibilities, he was instrumental in developing MyGolfSpy's data-driven testing methodologies and continues to sift through our data to find the insights that can help improve your game.
Tony believes that golfers deserve to know what's real and what's not, and that means MyGolfSpy's equipment coverage must extend beyond the so-called facts as dictated by the same companies that created them.
Most of all Tony believes in performance over hype and #PowerToThePlayer.

Kenny

Andrew

6 months ago

Question about CG Y and optimal strike location. So the CG Y for the Rogue SZ (weight forward) is listed as -5.50 mm from face center. Does that generally mean that the optimal strike location is -5.50 mm lower than the center of the face? As in the Rogue SZ is a good option if your miss is low on the face compared to other drivers where the CG Y is closer to zero? Thanks!

erock

Erock

7 months ago

Any plans to measure and publish face angles?

I am in a minority in that I need high loft but have a very strong grip and I deloft the face at impact. So having a driver that has a face angle at address that falls open really appeals to my eye and helps mitigate my snap hook miss. So far the TM M3 has been the driver that sits the most open to my eye. Luckily they make a 12* loft option so its been really good for me. I would be curious to know if the M3 face is really open or if its just to my eye. Also would love to know which other drivers sit more open and which sit closed. Most oem’s say their drivers sit neutral but I don’t buy it. For example the Triton last year seemed to sit very closed.

Jon Silverberg

7 months ago

I’m having trouble with the following sentence from the “So which is best” section: “Slower swing speed players, who need help keeping the ball in the air, generally do well with high/back designs.” Does the word “high” in front of the slash refer to a) MOI or b) CG above the NA? Thanks.

RJH

7 months ago

If High/Back with respect to CGNA, then “High” will refer to the distance of the CG is well above of the Neutral Axis. If so, will more gearing (twisting) be resulted? Should the slower swing players to use Higher CGNA driver such as Callaway GBB Epic’s 4.0mm (CGNA) or Callaway BB Fusion’s 1.0mm above Neutral Axis?
Kindly also clarify that in theory, 4.0mm CGNA driver will normally has higher spin than that of 1.0mm CGNA driver assuming that all other conditions kept constant.

Sean

7 months ago

Did titleist choose not to participate again?
That means we haven’t seen 917 OR TS model numbers compared to the industry, correct?

Jack

Thank you for this article – a wealth of information that most of us could never, never find or have access to.

One question: In the observation section below the CG XY (Heel/Toe CG) measurement it states golfers looking for a fade biased driver should consider the PING G400 MAX.

But the Cg primer, explaining closure rate, states back CG designs with faster closure rates are more forgiving, and can help to mitigate a slice, and in the observation section below the CG YZ (CG RELATIVE TO FACE CENTER) measurements it says the PING G400 offers the most rearward CG.

Always a balancing act with this sort of stuff because we’re dealing with differing forces.

Back CG generally gives you faster closure rates, which means it’s easier to square the face, or even go past square and start the ball left. Basically, we’re talking about how the weighting affects the face angle at impact. What we’re talking about is an influence on the directionality contribution of impact. Faster closure rate can mitigate a slice by starting the ball more left.

The fade bias comes from the internal weighting that suggests it favors the toe. A couple things happen because of this. 1 – closure rate slows as mass is moved farther from the hosel. 2 – because the CG is toe side of center, anything to the heel side of that will create fade/slice spin.

G400 MAX is an unusual design in that high MOI/back CG is typically neutral to heel weighted. That offsets some of the closer rate stuff, but it’s also higher MOI than most, which can help mitigate the fade bias a bit.

Again – a balancing act. For ball speed retention it’s tough to beat, but if you’re looking for shot shape correction, SFT, D-Type, Rogue Draw, or the Bridgestone are likely better options.

RJH

7 months ago

Hi Tony,
In your above reply, the lines of “2 – because the CG is toe side of center, anything to the heel side of that will create fade/slice spin.”, should the “anything to the heel side” is the typo error of “toe” side?

Also I have a query on PING G400 Max. The design of G400 Max is to attain the highest MOI and the most back CG in the market. Thus slower swing players or mid/high handicappers are their target users. To this amateur segment, in normal design should the driver be mostly draw biased? It appears to me that there is a little of conflict in design focus. My understanding is that the fade biased driver is mostly designed for tour (fast swing) players)

Your comments are appreciated.

Mitch

7 months ago

So I guess I’ll stay with my Cobra King ltd?
Would love to see a head to head against some of the older drivers compare to new drivers

Ron

7 months ago

The data is interesting and the time it took to generate it must have been considerable. The bottom line is to take time to get fitted. Then you know what driver and shaft is best for you. Going in I thought the gMax would be the one considering my age (74) and swing speed (85). Much to my surprise it was the Rogue with an ultralight stiff Grand Bassara shaft.

Tejindar Singh

7 months ago

I am interested in changing my driver.I have short listed TaylormadeM2or M3,Callaway Rogue and Ping G400max.Please tell me which of the above is best suited for me with regular shaft,I am 66 years old with handicap 16…Thanks and regards

brad smith

therod

7 months ago

The question I have (being an engineer) is how do you actually quantify these results? Yes, we can see the new Ping is the, or at least, 1 of the, most forgiving drivers. But what do the numbers actually mean? What kind of difference do these numbers mean? What kind of results do you see in the fairway?

Weston

7 months ago

The actual result is the reduction in twisting on off center shots. So Ping, for example might twist 8* on an a toe shot, and the Taylormade M3 440 might twist up to 16* on a toe shot (all things being equal of course) Less twisting is what MOI helps with and you’ll find more fairways with a more square face angle and more potentially more distance due to roll and a better maintained transfer of energy to the ball, but it could be at the loss of carry distance due to increased spin. As the CG goes back to increase MOI, CG also goes up. CGNA placement has a direct correlation to spin. So the higher it is on the scale, the higher the driver will spin. So to answer your question, the quantifiable data is back spin, and club rotation on off center strikes.

therod

7 months ago

Right. I understand that. I was just asking how exactly we could quantify that result. It’s relative, I know. AoA, clubhead speed, loft, shaft flex, etc, I know there’s a boatload of variables. I’m simply saying, or asking, how we could actually quantify how much more forgiving one club is vs the next using the MoI number…

Steve

7 months ago

And yet the M3 440 is shown to be shown less “Offline” in the test results of the “Most Wanted.” (Moderate Swing Speed)

Is it the face? Well, the “Max” is more offline than other Pings.

Is it some other factor? The random nature of testers? Me not understanding the data as to offline?

The thing to keep in mind is that MOI and accuracy aren’t the same things and higher MOI drivers aren’t necessarily more accurate.

As Weston said, you do get some deflection on off-center hits, but that’s often mitigated by the bulge pattern on the driver. MOI’s role is to help mitigate the loss of speed due to deflection and accompanying energy loss.

We see strong MOI correlations when we look at the standard deviation of ball speed and the difference between the longest shots and the shortest shots with any given club.

Total forgiveness, which includes MOI, face tech, bulge and roll, and how all of the above works with a given golfer to produce consistent results, best correlates with our shot area metric. What we’re talking about is consistency, but even within that, there’s some room for interpretation. Two drivers may produce identical (or nearly identical shot areas), but one may be more accurate (left to right dispersion), while the may look like the same dispersion ellipse rotated 90%, not as consistent left to right, but much more consistent long to short.

DL

7 months ago

Tony, is there any indication that companies are starting to look at graphene as a weight-saving (and strengthening) measure in drivers? I wouldn’t be surprised if we see something in the next few years, once cost comes down on it (PXG perhaps?).

The industry is always exploring new materials and graphene is obviously one of them. My understanding is that it’s cost prohibitive right now. Callaway uses next to none in its golf balls (not a dig on Callaway, it is, after all, a nanoparticle), but to build driver structures with it would require quite a bit more.

KM

7 months ago

Aldila is using graphene in their Synergy shaft.

Scott

7 months ago

So I am a highspeed guy. I swing up 4 degrees and produce 185 ball speed. Normally hit high and center on the face. Will a low CG or high CG driver retain more ball Speed? And will gear effect of a high CG club be better than low CG club (higher launch lower spin even at the expense of a little ballspeed)

You always want impact to be as close to the CG projection as possible. High CG can work if you’re consistently high on the face, but it’s a spin creator when impact is below CG. Textbook example of why Krank drives work for long drive guys, but are a niche fit at best for the rest of the world.

Andrew

7 months ago

Could you explain how this works? For some reason I keep envisioning strikes above CG as taking spin off…

Brad

7 months ago

So, if I take a Ping G400 SFT and change out the weight at the back of the head from 10 grams to an 18 gram weight, what does that do to the MOI and CG? Does it move from being a lower (below average) MOI driver to being a higher (above average) MOI driver?

The fact that so many of these drivers can have weights moved or increased/decreased would seem to make the forgiveness rankings merely a starting point with the end result from a true custom fit either increasing or decreasing MOI and CG either marginally or significantly.

Don’t have a concrete answer for you, but there are tradeoff considerations. Heavier weight boosts MOI, but you’re putting heavier weight in the heel, which is going to move the CG farther forward and create even greater heel bias.

Brad

7 months ago

The adjustable weight in the G400 SFT is at the back of the head and only slightly heel side (from center). Are you certain that placing a larger weight in that location would move the CG forward when it is near the back of the head? That seems counter-intuitive.

If you’re constantly off the toe, the right side of the CG XY chart is a good place to start. You’re looking for something that achieves a fade bias through weighting. This is one of the features of the Titleist SFT system that I like quite a bit. It allows you to flip a fair amount of weight out towards the toe.

Brad

Wiegs

7 months ago

Which of the charts would you suggest dividing up to try different drivers from different sections? You seem to suggest that the driver MOI/ CGNA to be the most useful, so that one? Also, does the neutral axis change with face loft? If it does, and the driver head doesn’t change significantly with that, I would think that that chart would change a ton with different driver lofts…

Rob

Biggi

6 months ago

Great info and I bet a lot of work went into it. I do feel what is hugely missing is total weight of each head. The Ping G400 Max head I have is a heavy 207g(bit of Cobra L4V marketing perhaps – increase weight and advertise the high MOI), the TS2 is 201g and I´ve been told the Callaways are even lighter, 195g for the Rogue. For ever gram you add to the head you can raise horizontal MOI about 32g/cm2. At the same head weights some of these heads might have very similar MOI and the GMax wouldn’t be leading the pack in “forgiveness”.

Also – are the heads measured with an adapter and screw or without? Ideally they would be measured with, but I understand that’s a lot of work. Most of them are about 10g., which should move the CG about 2-3mm towards the hosel.